Reasonable boundaries

Lodi Unified has thrown out a cyberbullying policy viewed by some - especially students - as an assault on the free speech rights of students.

Comment

By The Record

recordnet.com

By The Record

Posted Aug. 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By The Record

Posted Aug. 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

Lodi Unified has thrown out a cyberbullying policy viewed by some - especially students - as an assault on the free speech rights of students.

Supporters saw it as an attempt to curb online bullying, which is the electronic equivalent of physical and verbal assault.

The policy required students participating in extracurricular activities to agree not to use social media to badger others. Failure to follow the policy could result in being banned from after-school activities.

Almost immediately the policy, adopted by trustees in the spring, raised the ire of students who complained about its vagueness. If a student "likes" an obscene rap song, does that violate the policy? Apparently, if an administrator thinks so.

That students have free speech rights is established law. The Supreme Court 44 years ago declared in the Tinker case that students don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." That case involved the right of students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.

To be sure, not all student free speech rights are created equal. In 2007, the high court upheld the suspension of a student who unfurled a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 Jesus" during a school event.

The court said the banner could reasonably be interpreted as endorsing drug use.

It also could be interpreted as sophomoric. Or childish. And let's not forget, while students have constitutionally protected free speech rights, they're still children.

No less an authority than Justice Hugo Black, one of the high court's strongest supporters of free speech, ridiculed the Tinker decision raising that very point.

"The original idea of schools, which I do not believe is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date, was that children had not yet reached the point of experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders," Black wrote in dissent.

In other words, kids still have a few things to learn.

But learning is a two-way street. We would hope we don't regress toward the position of Justice Clarence Thomas in the 2007 BONG HiTS case when he said in support of the court's majority that "in the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."

Had such an autocratic approach to behavior been the rule, many of the nation's important social changes would never have occurred, including the civil rights movement.

In the case of the Lodi Unified cyberbullying policy, students are getting a hands-on lesson on the power and importance of free speech. It's up to the district to fashion a policy that is reasonable and has understandable boundaries for free speech.